Post your suggestions and/or votes here. Please word your suggestion/topic in question form. You may want to think along the following lines:
I need some time to prepare for our new topic, so I will close voting this Sunday PM. Thank s for you input!
11 comments:
From the possibly epistemological point of view or maybe even the political view....
Should we confront the things that threaten us and try to defeat them, or should we retreat, sacrificing even truth if it is necessary to enjoy a precious, if tenuous, peace? Should we ignore real menaces we can't control in favor of imagined ones we can?
(and no i didnt exactly pull that out of nowhere, but i thought that it was a very good question to ponder....)
Cris's question is interesting in quite a few ways. Should we confront governments or tolerate them? Is there a middle way? Should we accept the way the world is, even the things we think we know so that we can preserve order, or seek the truth and accept chaos?
It's sort of like politics, ethics, and metaphysics all smashed into one. It's going to be kind of difficult to wrap our mind's around , but I like the idea.
The question I thought of is along the same vein: What do we owe others? Other people, other species, the government, the planet, etc.
Of course, this would get us into a whole mess of things, like:
1) Do people have inalienable rights (rights that your are born with), or is our duty to others dependent on what they do for us?
2)Direct vs. indirect support of something (ex., if you don't support the Iraq war does paying your taxes mean you're a hypocrite?)
3)Do animals have minds and do they have rights?
4)If animals have rights, do they have the same rights as people? Do plants deserve this consideration? What about non-living things, like our planet?
I think since this question has many aspects and is based in politics and ethics (and relates to other categories) it will be interesting to a lot of people in the club and we can also go into a lot of different directions with it.
I really like that question, "what do we owe others?" I think that could lead us to a very interesting discussion. I guess I vote for that
yeah actually i do like the "what do we owe others?" that in and of itself is a very good question, im not so sure about the others benath it but that is good, and like CHQ said, we can break that down into, what do we owe others, gov't, animals, etc.....im all for something along those lines.
"Should we confront the things that threaten us and try to defeat them, or should we retreat, sacrificing even truth if it is necessary to enjoy a precious, if tenuous, peace? Should we ignore real menaces we can't control in favor of imagined ones we can?"
I really like that idea, and I'd also like to bring up the concepts/ideas of both change and knowledge. I don't have a specific question about them yet, but I'll keep thinking of them and possibly make another reply later if I come up with something.
Wow, you guys sure know how to challenge me! Why don't we start with "What do we owe others?" i.e. duty, and see if we can then weave that thread through the other related questions?
Hmmm....
......maybe our next dicussion should be how to challenge mrb even more........=]
Well, it's best to put the topic in question format, you know. May I suggest, "How many laps do we have to make Mr. B swim in an olympic-sized pool full of sharks and flaming oil and speedo-clad hairy old Frenchmen before he finally blows his top?"
i did a little research on this topic and i found an interesting idea that id like to share...
along the lines of moral obligations and what we owe comes a questions of right versus wrong. are we obliged to do the right thing? what happens if we do wrong? and who decideds which is which?
"How do we judge whether an action is morally right or wrong? If an action is wrong, what reason does that give us not to do it? Why should we give such reasons priority over our other concerns and values?" In other words, do we owe it to others to always do what is right? Do we only stop ourselves from doing what is "wrong" as a kindness to others? Do we owe them that kindness?
I liked this quote to help define this.. "thinking about right and wrong is thinking about what we do in terms that could be justified to others"
Why should we have to justify our actions to others? do we OWE them this?? and why?
here are a couple questions to ponder...
who do we owe the most to? and why?
our family/parents for raising us and supporting us?
schools for educating us?
those without the neccesities of life? (food, water, ect.)
only those who specifically gave to us?
are there actually rankings of who we can "owe the most" to? what determines this?
what is the difference between the things we owe morally, and the things we owe because of our conscious?
Do we we have to give to charities because we are fortunate and they are no?
Do we have to give a gift to the person that gave us one?
What are the reprocussions of not giving?
do we feel bad?
do people stop giving us things?
does karma go kung-foo on our asses?
And why, if we do feel bad, should we?
does our conscious haunt us?
does the other person/people/animal/thing haunt us?
do we loose out on anything?
ect.
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